Season 1 Episode 5 - Poison in the Air
Edward Shaw, the man in the suit finds himself on the Incentive after being saved by the crew. He starts off by saying he seems to recognize Zigg. He admits that he is the man in the suit from the video from Ariel. He tells the crew that he has been in military intelligence for over thirty years. As for the constellation, he was a part of the organization as well. His ‘handler’ was a woman named Persephone. He also knew of another operator based on Ariel known only as Draco. Persephone gave Shaw assignments that involved a bit of danger, as he could handle himself in those situations. Shaw explains that he has tried to follow the clues to determine the nature of the constellation, but never got anywhere despite having over thirty years of experience in the intelligence service. He reveals that his code name in the constellation was Orion. He had been assigned to broker a deal with the Scoville cartel. The deal had been in place for years beforehand. He only had to go in and negotiate minor changes and ensure the deal was secure for the foreseeable future. The cartel handled transportation for a couple of crates that needed to go from a place called Crusade technologies. The crates would eventually make their way to a small moon called Perdido in the Georgia system. Zigg, using his training, makes the judgement that Shaw is telling the truth. Shaw again claims Zigg is familiar. Zigg presents the ‘seven deadly movements’. Shaw then remembers Zigg and a friend of ‘that seven fellow.’ He then realizes where he is and reveals that he vaguely remembers seeing the wanted posters for the crew a while ago. However, they have been taken down. According to Shaw, Seven was on Ariel when the drug bust occurred. Shaw spent years skimming enough money to run from the Constellation and bring his wife with him. His kids think he’s dead. Shaw taught Operational Security back on Rubicon when he worked at the Intelligence Academy. Blake flies off the handle and wants to space the old man. He mentions Lt. Sand and Shaw is surprised. If she is the one chasing them, they are most likely going to die. Realizing what is going on, Shaw pulls out his tablet and shows the crew a picture of a package he received from Seven following his supposed death. It is identical to the packages everyone else received. This was strange because no one should have been able to find him. While Blake goes crazy again and wants to space Shaw for not coming to the meeting on Woodhurst, Shaw requests that the crew proceed to The Boudoir to see Mister and Missus so that he can obtain new forged papers for him and his wife. Shaw claims that Sev sent out many more invitations than they think. They try to trick Shaw and say there were dozens of people that showed up. Gardener Dandelion clams there were eighty-five. Blake also claims the number was very high. They both have difficulty lying. Zigg is at least successful in causing Shaw to doubt himself. Shaw explains that he was a field operator, more of a bureaucrat than a handler. He was approached by someone to take a bribe. When he refused, they threatened him. He went along and after three years he was forced to kill a colleague. For the next twenty years, he was forced to do terrible things. Every time he tried to find out what was going on, people either disappeared or were transferred. He was once only three days away from escaping on a transport with a fake identity when his secret funds were mysteriously gone. Shaw talks about Lt. Sand as someone who would not be corruptible by the Constellation. The crew try to think of any possible way this could not be true. Shaw explains that he trained Lt. Sand when she was at the Academy on Rubicon, the West Point of the Alliance. Shaw talks about how even though he had near unfettered access to alliance personnel files, he was only told to access two for the entire time he was under their control. This indicated to him that they had plenty of people above him in the Intelligence service who were also under their control. Shaw’s main job was taking care of any face to face meetings that were needed with dangerous people in the field. This was his job mostly because he was very good at covering his tracks. That was, after all, the main subject of the class he taught at the academy, Operational Security. He used to give extra credit to students if they could infiltrate his office and leave small objects on his desk. Most students were caught in the planning stage. Seven Smith succeeded eleven out of the thirteen times he attempted it, far outpacing the previous record of seven out of ten set by Seven’s adoptive father, Elias, back when the previous instructor was teaching the course. On Ariel, Shaw was only there to check up on the Scoville cartel. One vial in one of the two crates had gone missing in the most recent shipment. The cartel claimed that when they received the crate, the vial was already missing. Just after the vial went missing, the local cops raided one of the local cartel warehouses. At the same time, Shaw had made a deal with the cartel boss in order to flee the Constellation. In exchange, Shaw made sure the cartel boss escaped a very long prison sentence. Shaw talks a bit about Perdido, the moon where the crates eventually went. It is a relatively new moon with mostly mining operations. It orbits the planet Prophet. Shaw explains that travel to conferences and consultations were a part of his job. He was acutely aware that he was conveniently traveling to places that the Constellation needed him to take care of something. Shaw talks about the incident on Ariel. He and the crew already know about Rhoda and her boys, who were sent to prison on charges of human trafficking, which weren’t even true. Shaw tells them to look for other people who were sent away on similar charges. Those people should have more information. Shaw, for the hundredth time, explains that he needs to go to The Boudoir to see Mister and Missus in order to obtain new documents for him and his wife. He inquires as to how the crew was able to find him on the MegaSphere. The crew explains that they used facial recognition and found him at the signing with Constantine the World Destroyer. Blake threatens Shaw with violence if we ever require his help in the future, letting him know that he better help the crew, or else. But it will be extremely important. Edward Shaw shrugs and agrees to leave some sort of way to contact him in the future. The crew lands at The Boudoir. They talk to Corvus, the ship outfitter. He smells the outside of the ship and can tell that is has been to the MegaSphere. He talks about how he recently had a freighter come in from ‘Afterglow’. He offers to install new toilets. He does install some new seats that are more comfortable. Blake talks a bit about the current load-out of the ship. Corvus talks about the SuperBlow. He is skeptical about the rumors that Konstantine was not the one driving his rig. That is impossible, he claims, because there are so few people in the verse who could pull off those moves. The crew go to talk with Mister and Missus. The crew orders a new set of false identities. Mister and Missus lament that Edward Shaw is such a disdainful man who doesn’t like people. Mister talks about the MegaSphere and the Superblow. Apparently he is a fan of Konstantine. Mister laments that Missus likes forging documents so much that they haven’t been on a vacation in five years. The crew returns to the ship and heads for Ariel. They are looking into Crusade Technologies and ‘Dan’s Adequate Courier Service.’ Tony offers to help with using the cortex but is rebuffed by Blake. Crusade Technologies is a multi-planet, multi-system pharmaceutical company. They were not found to have done anything illegal during the raid two years ago. The location that is the original source of the crates is still open. Blake attempts to hack into the court records surrounding the raid. He succeeds, but Kain comes in and is very angry that Blake almost set off an alarm in the government system. All of the files are redacted, but one name is still accessible. It looks like someone has hacked into the files in order to reveal the name. The name is Scrin Muldoon. He was questioned during the incident because he was the shipping and receiving manager at the Crusade Technologies warehousing facility where the crates moved through. Scrin is currently doing a twice daily drag review under the stage name Katrina Von Riker. When the crew arrives, she is in the middle of a number. Zigg tries to get backstage, but is told ‘performers only’. He tries again and easily gets by with a suave lie. Blake looks around for thugs, but sees none. Dandy tries to get backstage by asking to speak to Ms. Riker. After giving her a compliment, Dandy gets right to business and asks about the incident. She describes how Draco approached her many years ago. He had her divert two crates of a regular weekly shipment of a common precursor chemical. This went on for over ten years and she received 500 dollarydoos a week for the trouble of covering up the diversion. High Concentration AdrenoLade Precurser. After the raid, the crates stopped showing up. They find out about the courier that disappeared after the raid. They find out about the lab technician. They go to Perdido and learn about the ailment. They also learn about the basic need of the population to use the common drug Wasablade. When they find the lab technician, they find out that the original ailment on this moon was something that affected the ears, and she was the tech that manufactured the Sonlohex D that was added to the Atmospheric scrubbers to counteract the effect. The big problem is that the ailment is no longer a problem and the Sonlohex is no longer necessary. However, it is still being added to the atmosphere in order to create a consistent and large demand for Wasablad. The crew goes up to one of the Dipper ships, an older, less advanced version of terraforming ship. There is absolutely zero security. The lab tech finds the reagent station and confirms that the ship is in fact adding Sonlohex D to the atmosphere. She also confirms that some of the empty vials nearby were indeed manufactured by her. The newer ones were likely made at a Crusade Technologies facility on another planet. Given that they had plenty of time, the crew of the Incentive spend the next week and a half travelling to each Dipper Ship (there are thirteen left out of the original fifty) to remove all of the Sonlohex D and sabotage the systems so that even if someone came to replace it, it would never make it into the atmosphere. The Incentive crew saves the Lab Tech and the Courier and take them to Mister and Missus to find out what their new lives will be.